Being a writer is interesting. When do you actually get to claim to be a writer? I have written for decades but I have never even felt I could list it as a hobby like, say, reading. And forget about talking about it in conjunction with my profession. It felt ridiculous to label myself as a writer when no one had paid me specifically for writing, even though I managed to turn almost every job I had into a writing or editing job.
Writing is one of those things that is easy to claim – just ask my 10-year-old. He fully believes our family has two writers and doesn’t understand why I haven’t managed to get his five page treatise on pet mice up on Amazon yet. (My concerns about expertise were dismissed and he latched onto copyright issues. He is now diligently taking photos of his mice with an old phone.) He’s also working on stories about Pumpkin the dog and his best friend, Cheerio, the skeleton. And he is absolutely right to think he is a writer. I don’t like gatekeeping, especially about art, which is absolutely for everyone.
But at the same time, if I’m honest – I’m a bit picky. I’ve read plenty of bad books. Lots of people claim it should be fine as long as you get the point, but my brain legitimately does not get the gist of things with bad grammar sometimes and it’s like having to translate the actual meaning. I don’t know if that is a neurodivergent thing or if it’s normal, but it’s how it is in my head. On top of that, it’s hard to enjoy reading something that is poorly edited or poorly organized without my fingers twitching for a purple pen to start correcting it (purple because that is the color my editor uses and nothing else will do now). I can’t enjoy the book because my brain immediately starts reworking the writing, splitting my attention. It’s hard to follow a story or a “how to” when you are also restructuring a sentence.
I worry my book will be the same for others. Maybe I think it is good because of all the things I know that didn’t actually manage to make it onto the page. Goodness knows my amazing beta readers found several such confusing instances. And I’ve struggled with imposter syndrome my whole life. So, believing I’m really a real writer has been a problem.
This is one of those things that I feel torn about. With one hundred percent of my heart, I believe that art and creativity don’t need a reason to exist other than for joy. If painting brings you joy, then you should do it, even if you are creating stick figures. If rocking out in the car makes you happy, then sing louder, even if it’s off-key. If writing touches a place deep in your soul, then you should write, even if you don’t know a subject from a verb.
The problem is, that just like beauty, art has become something ruined by unattainable standards. With the internet, it is far too easy to compare our painting to one of Van Gogh’s. Or perhaps you are comparing your newborn song tune to a Bach cello concerto. We constantly compare our amateur efforts to those of people with more experience and better tools and despair that we will never be anywhere as good. We ruin our pleasure in the process.
‘Amateur.’ You say that as if it was a dirty word or something, but ‘amateur’ comes from the Latin word ‘amare,’ which means love, love. To do things for the love of it. -Mozart in the Jungle
Why do we have this idea that we have to be good at something to enjoy it? Is it because of our capitalist economy where time equals money? We’ve gotten this idea that art is a commodity and that it isn’t worthwhile unless it’s something that can sell. Do we think that if our time isn’t spent making money, then it was time wasted? Do we actually believe that lie?
Why is it that if people want to go shoot some baskets we don’t expect them to go pro, mention you go fishing and no one asks you what competitions you’ve won, say you golf and they may ask you about your handicap but never about how much money you’ve made playing… but say you write and people immediately ask what you have published? I can only imagine it is the same for other artistic pursuits. Painter – what shows and galleries have you been in? Beautiful quilt – you should sell these! (Nevermind that people will gasp when you ask them to pay what your time is worth.)
I think this problem is compounded for women. Women who are often socialized to prioritize the needs of others. Women who are being told to “lean in” at work and statistically still end up doing more at home than their working partners. Or women that are staying home with small children, who spend their days serving as a driver, maid, and short-order cook whose unpaid labor makes everyone else’s lives possible while losing themselves in the process. We know how expensive braces and soccer camps are and we just can’t justify buying that new set of watercolors for ourselves. And who has time to write when there is an endless cycle of dishes and laundry waiting? There is always something else we are supposed to be doing. Some other way we feel we owe our time and effort. So we fit ourselves into the nooks and crannies leftover in our lives.
Do we get to this place where we wonder, what if our hobby could bring money to the table? I mean, then it isn’t prioritizing yourself. You aren’t “wasting” money on something just because it makes you happy. It’s for work, and it is okay to prioritize work. We practically make a fetish of it here in this country. We are a culture of busy – humble bragging about how on the go we are and how we don’t even have time to think.
But, if it’s work, then there are expectations. A certain level of, oh.. professionalism is expected. So, in the bits and pieces of time we nibble out of the day for our “work” we strive for the perfection achieved by people who actually get to go away to an office. The ones who have hours of uninterrupted time – oh how I envy that! The expansiveness of a day devoted just to one thing without the 800 other interruptions of other people and to-do lists at home… Then we judge ourselves for falling short when the playing field was never level.
And let’s be honest, just because art makes us happy, that doesn’t mean it is ready to sell. Then we get disheartened and give it up telling ourselves we aren’t good enough and walking away. All joy is lost in the process, the perfectionism and professionalism killing our creativity. And suddenly art is something that we can’t do and we forget it is something we can’t do without.
At some point – you have to take a good look at the status quo and realize that it is 100% bullshit. You deserve time for yourself. Time to create, even just time to sit and be. It is okay to find space in your budget for things just because they make you happy to be alive. Please – try all the art things. Try all the ways to be creative: sketch, paint, and draw. Sculpt with clay sliding between your fingers. Get a fancy pen out and try lettering or calligraphy. Work magic with yarn and sticks. Cook the fancy dessert that you haven’t made because no one else in the household will eat it. Sew a quilt or collage with fabric. Arrange plants and flowers so they are greater than the sum of their parts. Take pictures of the sunset. Write a play, poem, or sonnet. Go bigger and write a memoir or novel. Get some friends together and read a play or perform a sonnet at an open mic night. Find a place to blow glass or make a mosaic.
Yeah, yeah, yeah… Your first efforts likely won’t be “worthy” of being posted on social media. (I think you should post them anyway, but I don’t want to digress in an effort to fight the false realities we create!) But please – I beg of you – don’t judge by the results. Judge the process, and judge it based solely on your happiness. Find what sets your soul ablaze and keep doing it. Make space for it. Make space for yourself.
Because when you make space magical things can happen. If you are like me, maybe one day it will turn into a book that you actually think other people will enjoy reading (even though you spent your early years apologizing to your critique group for every last one of your efforts). You just might get to the point where you are creating something that you can turn into a profession… But that isn’t the goal. The goal is to enjoy life. And that is a magical thing too.
So, do I still feel like an imposter when I say I am a writer? Absolutely. It’s hard to believe that I am anything other than an amateur (and amateur like it is a dirty word). But no one pays me to read and I know I am a reader. No one pays me to be a mom and I am a mother. Even if this book bombs, even if it turns out that no one else wants to read it, I will still write because it is what I need to be doing for myself.
So, am I a writer? Absolutely. And while it may sound ridiculous to some, my declaration is a radical way to fight a tiny portion of what is wrong with our current culture.
So fight back and make space for art and space for yourself in your life.